1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and memory controllers configured for provisioning memory in a memory system for mirroring.
2. Description of Related Art
In memory systems today, a portion of the total memory may be mirrored in another portion of the total memory so as to provide a backup for failover in case of error. Selection of candidate memory for mirroring, however, is typically hardcoded into a memory controller and is no way dynamic. Consider, for example, a channel of memory with four Dual In-Line Memory Modules (DIMMs). In such an example, a memory controller may be configured so as to use DIMMs 1 and 4 to mirror DIMMs 2 and 3. In such an environment, the quality of the DIMMs is not taken into account. Some DIMMs, due to physical degradation over time, may be of less quality or, said another way, of higher susceptibility of error. Using these DIMMs as primary memory while using other DIMMs with less susceptibility as a mirrored backup may result in more instances of failover due to a higher probability of error in the primary memory.